Free Ruptured: The Cantati Chronicles by Maggie Mae Gallagher Page B

them than most people. I felt things so deeply. My surface might appear to be a calm lake, but my emotions were more bottomless than any ocean, with turbulent currents that dragged the unwary into the abyss.
    A vehemence I rarely unleashed took hold and filled my soul with the ice I had been accused of for so long. I lifted my Glock, sighted it, and fired my last bullet into Cade’s chest. Utter shock registered on his features as he glanced at the blood blooming upon his chest. For Quinten, and for me. He would never violate anyone again. Cade toppled backward, dead before his body impacted the ground.
    I glanced around the field of battle. There was no one else. They were all dead.

Chapter Nine
    I opened my shields, expanding my energy outward until I sat in the epicenter. Nothing. No life signatures except mine. The Compound was far enough away that the people there did not trigger my sensors.
    I knelt next to Quinten. Gently, with as much care as possible, I closed his sightless eyes. I stared at his handsome face. My fingers trailed over his cheeks. Anguish stole my breath as I gazed at his prone form. I may not have been in love with him, but he was my friend. One I had trusted implacably. I clasped his lifeless hand, devoid of all the solid strength I had come to expect. I would miss his warm smile, calm demeanor, and the possibility of an us.
    Wetness splashed on my hands and I realized I was crying. The hope his feelings had awakened was crushed under the oppressive weight of his demise. I would carry him back. I owed him that much. He deserved a warrior’s funeral.
    Hundreds of bodies lay strewn about me. Demons hugged by the human counterparts who killed them, embracing each other for all eternity in death.
    I had to dispose of all the corpses. But first, I spent the next hour filching supplies from the dead. Had to, as morbid as it might seem. We needed the weapons too badly. The pile beside Quinten’s body grew. I’d have to send a detail company back for these with a cart. Once I had remanded all the available weapons into two piles next to Quinten, I began setting the bodies on fire, starting at the far end of the battleground from Quinten’s body. Humans intermixed with demons were easy. Demon bodies did not need a burning agent to ignite, partially due to their sulfuric compound, but hot enough to help incinerate the human bodies amidst them. I memorized the face of every one of my men who had perished. I should be numb to it all, but I wasn’t. How could anyone not feel the senselessness of it all?
    How had this attack happened? Why had Drystan caught us so unprepared, as though we continued to forget that he wanted the extinction of the human race, to breed more of his demons and claim Earth as his dominion? This had been the largest skirmish in months. At least a hundred men were dead. Including Quinten. There had to be hundreds of demons. I’d never get an accurate count with all the body parts.
    I ventured from body pile to body pile with the flame thrower I’d discovered on one of the deceased. We had been so vastly outnumbered in this fight. I reached Cade’s body, his face forever frozen with the shock of his death. It had been a nicer end than what he had deserved. I did not regret it. The Council would kill me for my actions, if they found out. I ended a man’s life, an offense punishable by death. Regardless of my reasons for doing so, in light of my recent defiance of their missives, the Council could never know. I set the flame to his clothing, watching as the flames licked his body until it engulfed him. There was nothing more I could do for any of them. My tears were empty, and sorrow burned into anger. I would hold to the promise I had made, the one to my mother, that I would rid the Earth of demons. I would. That was why I was here, to end Drystan and all his demon minions until this planet was wiped clean of their foul existence.
    The Council would listen to reason with the latest